Lots of debris left behind after parades

Wednesday

Feb 13, 2013 at 9:45 PM

After the music, lights and laughs of Mardi Gras disappear, the roadways are trashed.

Xerxes WilsonStaff Writer

After the music, lights and laughs of Mardi Gras disappear, the roadways are trashed.Parade routes and adjoining streets are lined with beads, beer bottles and other assorted garbage. “It is a huge mess, but a lot of folks won’t even notice it when they go to work this morning,” Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Jerry Larpenter said Wednesday. “They start cleaning early.” Larpenter said crews typically hit the ground at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. the morning after and work about six hours. Parish street sweepers are also used.“Everything imaginable you find out there. Trash, hamburgers, baby diapers — you find everything,” Larpenter said. “It is really not a burden on anyone. It costs a few dollars, but the tax dollars and the good time people have by far offset that.”In Terrebonne, a crew of 60 to 70 jail trusties spearhead the cleaning effort. The inmates split into teams to pick up beads, bottles and whatever rubbish is left behind. The garbage is collected with normal household garbage, making it difficult to get an accurate estimate of how much trash comes from a parade, said Clay Naquin, Terrebonne’s solid waste administrator.Naquin estimates the street sweepers captured 11 tons of trash following the parades on Monday and Tuesday. Fat Tuesday is the only day crews do not clean up because of the Krewe of Houma’s 11 a.m. parade, Larpenter said.Crews will also be hitting Bayou Terrebonne to clean debris from the waterway that runs along the parade route, Larpenter said. Larpenter said the trusties in the cleanup crews must apply and be selected by a committee. Only non-violent criminals are chosen, and they work other times of the year to clean up different parts of the parish.“They get to go outside. They are not locked in,” Larpenter said. “(They are) not sitting around watching TV, not paying taxes, not working at being a father. It is a way to give back to society for their upkeep.”In Thibodaux, the city’s Department of Public Works and Parks Department team up with trustees to clean after each parade. “If you work as a team, it is a very easy process,” said Public Works Director Miguel Maggio. Maggio said crews begin sweeping all the debris to the middle of the street the morning after the parade. The debris is then collected by a street sweeper before a final pass is made. Maggio said the process takes one to two days depending on the weather. Windy weather makes cleanup a little more difficult. Workers go through about 500 60-gallon bags and fill about six 30-yard dumpsters.The most common items are beads and bottles, Maggio said. Maggio said the amount of beads left on the ground in recent years has surprised him. “You will find piles and piles of beads that nobody brings home,” Maggio said. “When I was a kid, they used to throw glass beads. We would pull glass out of peoples’ yards because we didn’t leave anything. Unless it is a big beautiful bead with a theme. They take those.”Crews will also be going around in bucket trucks to remove the beads and reflective tape from low-hanging trees and power lines in the coming days, Maggio said. Parades in the unincorporated areas of Lafourche Parish use trusties from the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office to get their roads back to normal.

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